West has no right to give or refuse Syrian people legitimacy – Assad's advisor

Syrians hold pictures of re-elected Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as they celebrate in Damascus after Assad was announced as the winner of the country's presidential elections on June 4, 2014. (AFP Photo / Joseph Eid) / AFP

The Syrian election does not need Western endorsement to be considered legitimate, it is the voices of Syrian people themselves that make the vote legitimate, President Assad’s media advisor, Bouthaina Shaaban told RT.

This week's Bashar Assad victory in the Syrian presidential poll with 88.7
percent of the vote, Shaaban says, clearly shows that even a
war-torn country has the right to decide its own future, as some
11 out of 15 million went to the polls.

“We are not really waiting for legitimacy from the
West,” Shaaban said, accusing Western and Arab countries of
targeting Syria, arming and financing the brutal opposition in a
3-year-long conflict. “The Syrian people not only voted for
President Assad, I think they voted for Syria. They voted against
foreign intervention.”

As Syrians went to the polls on Tuesday, US State Department
spokesperson Marie Harf described the vote as “a
disgrace,” saying Assad “has no more credibility today
that he did yesterday.”

“Detached from reality and devoid of political participation,
the Assad regime-staged election today continues a 40-year family
legacy of violent suppression that brutally crushes political
dissent and fails to fulfill Syrians' aspirations for peace and
prosperity,” said Harf.

In response to Western, and especially US criticism of the
election, Shaaban once again reiterated that the US does not set
the global legitimacy standards.

“I would like to say to all Western officials who say they
will not acknowledge it – gone are days when legitimacy was
derived from the West. The West has no right to give our people
legitimacy. It is the Syrian people who make this election
legitimate. Its neither William Hague, nor the US, nor
France.”

Syrians, the media adviser says, don't care what West thinks what
because citizens are certain “that Western countries only
target us, only want to destroy our country.”

She says the elections were legitimate and even in war-torn
regions of the country people managed to vote.

“When we studied the country, most of the population are in
areas where they can vote. We are not talking about geographical
space. We are talking about people... People are mobile, they are
not buildings that you can’t move from one place to the other.
And therefore Syrian people voted and said their vote.”

Furthermore, Shaaban says President Assad did everything in his
power to ensure that other contenders in the 7-year-term
presidential race received maximum public exposure to allow a
democratic choice in the country.

“Since the nomination of the three candidates, president
Assad decided not to give any interviews to any media, not to
give any speeches, not to make any public appearances in order to
give space to two candidates so they can give the interviews,
they can talk to people, so they get more known. I think
President Assad did his best to elevate the chances of the other
two candidates.”

As far as the fate of post-election Syria, Shaaban says that
everyone “wants to restore peace and security” and to
rebuild the country. The focus will also be on reconciliation.

“They want to build their country. And they want to do
reconciliation, Syrian – Syrian reconciliation.”